E’ tradizione che gli ex presidenti degli Stati Uniti si impegnino su una tematica di rilievo pubblico e sociale, mediante la creazione di una fondazione o di una no-profit. In un articolo su The Verge, Casey Newton espone i piani di Barack Obama per combattere la disinformazione.

L’autrice mette in guardia da due pericoli: concentrarsi sull’idea che la bassa qualità sia la radice di tutti i mali, e usare la disinformazione come capro espiatorio per quelli che sono solamente noiosi problemi di direzione politica. Cita il giornalista Matt Yglesias:

Less-educated people are less knowledgeable and less media literate, and that’s not ideal. But Democrats need to read the correlation in the correct direction and try harder to appeal to their values, not write them off as too misinformed to be reached.

Obama ha affrontato l’argomento di recente durante un intervento all’Università di Stanford, ammettendo anche che parte della sua elezione a Presidente fosse dovuta a piattaforme come Facebook, MeetUp e MySpace, ma che il sistema informativo che ne è scaturito “sta sovraccaricando alcuni dei peggiori impulsi umani”, e prospettando un futuro ancora più fosco, in cui la tecnologia è al servizio dell’ascesa al potere di un autocrate.

But something must be done, Obama said, citing perhaps the most grim statistic in the entire COVID-19 pandemic: around 1 in 5 Americans refuse to get vaccinated under the false belief it is likely to cause them harm. “People are dying because of misinformation,” he said.

Ma le soluzioni proposte, per quanto di buon senso e interessanti, potrebbero non essere sufficienti.

So what to do? Like most people who venture into these waters, it’s here that Obama has the most trouble. Not because his ideas are bad — they’re better than most of what I’ve heard Congress suggest — but because they are so limited. It’s possible to imagine all of the president’s most practical suggestions being implemented and still wonder how they could reverse a global slide into autocracy.

Still, he makes several worthy suggestions. Platforms should describe their algorithmic recommendation systems in greater detail, so that we understand who benefits the most (and who doesn’t). (“If a meat-packing company has a proprietary technique to keep our hot dogs fresh and clean, they don’t have to reveal to the world what that technique is,” he said. “But they do have to tell the meat inspector.”)

They should add “circuit breakers” that slow the spread of viral posts to give fact-checkers a chance to review them, he argued. They should offer academics access to their systems to enable more meaningful research. They should fund nonprofit newsrooms.

And, Obama says, we should regulate tech platforms. He talked briefly about at least considering reform of Section 230, the law that exempts tech companies from legal liability in most cases for what their users post online.